Yesterday I bought a big bag of clementines at Harps. The mere sight of all that orange fruit piled in the produce aisle where sweet cherries lived during summer nudged me into Christmas. As I dumped them into a bowl on the kitchen island, I thought about holiday traditions and how I do certain things because somewhere buried in my holiday memories, we’ve always done it that way.

Back when I was a kid, Momma bought tangerines. (Clementines are a rather recent U.S. phenomenon, initially shipped over from Spain one year when the Florida citrus crop suffered a particularly bad year.) In my bowl, they smell just like Christmas on the farm, and they help fill the summer watermelon void.Continue Reading